Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Alphabet selling Google Domains assets to Squarespace

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

521–530 of 623 posts

Re: Alphabet selling Google Domains assets to Squarespace

#521

Post by qodeninja »

grayrest wrote: post #216
eek2121 wrote: post #199

Me with 100+ domains with Google: chuckles I'm in danger! I should have known. I started a transition for most of my stuff to cloudflare anyway. I kind of figured this would come eventually.

I worked for Squarespace 2010-2012 and the focus from management was mainly on keeping customers happy. It's not like it's ad focused and there's a need to extract maximum value from the userbase. It's possible that's changed in the last decade but Anthony (CEO) was really into having a premium product and a quick glance at the about page shows that most of the senior leadership hasn't changed so I don't see why they…

well theyre not going to keep me happy with "$20-$70" domain renewals. Fuck all of that. I dont need any of their services.

Re: Alphabet selling Google Domains assets to Squarespace

#522

Post by qodeninja »

nucleardog wrote: post #361
WillPostForFood wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate they don't have a dozen stupid upsells on domains like GoDaddy. But $20 a year is a straight ripoff.

This comes up all the time when registrars come up... "I just want a non-scummy registrar that doesn't try and upsell me, has support when I need it, and generally isn't shit." "Why is this non-shitty registrar $20/yr instead of $10/yr like everyone else! Hell, I can go to Joe's Discount Domain Emporium and get this for _$8_!" I guess I'd just really like to know, for the people that are looking at it like this... ho…

look at you, overpaying! how cute.

Re: Alphabet selling Google Domains assets to Squarespace

#523

Post by qodeninja »

brycewray wrote: post #34

I've been using Google Domains for a few years (previously used Namecheap); but, a few months ago, I took a domain I don't actively use and transferred it to Porkbun after reading so many positive comments on HN about that registrar. I was thinking, "Well, you never know about Google, so I may as well see how it goes, just in case." Have, indeed, been very pleased with Porkbun. The article says it'll be some months b…

hows their mail forwarding though?

Re: Alphabet selling Google Domains assets to Squarespace

#524

Post by qodeninja »

anon84873628 wrote: post #190
lordfrito wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After being an enthusastic early advocate for Google (Gmail since invite in 2004), I've been slowly migrating away from Google for years. The turning point for me was when they killed Google Music, which I had been using for a decade, forcing me to move my large catalog of songs elsewhere. I self host via Plex now. Strike 1. Then they killed the "free domain email", which became freeish (grandfathered) "google workgr…

Google Music libraries were automatically migrated to YT Music, which honestly is a better product now. They didn't "kill" the functionality and didn't force you to migrate anywhere...

the functionality to host your own music?? is that on YT Music?

Re: Alphabet selling Google Domains assets to Squarespace

#525

Post by damnesian »

pcurve wrote: post #292
DLA wrote: post #204

Yet another business Google bails on. Add that to the pile. Gee wonder why Google Cloud is getting smashed by AWS and Azure—maybe because nobody trusts Google to not flake out on that business or key products within it. They need some management changes!

They've killed off almost 300. They have ~100 left. https://about.google/intl/ALL_us/products/ What do you think will go next? I'm sure some of these will bite the bullet this year. 1. Exposure Notifications (maybe in 2-3 years) 2. Google Arts and Culture <- this one has to be expensive to maintain 3. Keep 4. Scholar 5. Tilt Brush 6. Google Lens 7. Google Groups 8. Google Drawings

Academic here- Scholar is used quite a bit, but they are competing with some big players, some that offer a lot of full-text Google doesn't. It can be useful to get your research started, but I don't know anyone who has used Scholar from start to finish for a piece of scholarship. So you're probably right on the money.

I'll be inconvenienced if I lose Keep- it's very handy and I use it extensively on a daily basis. But there are plenty of competitors in that market space- some excellent ones are open source.

Re: Alphabet selling Google Domains assets to Squarespace

#526

Post by qodeninja »

_smfg wrote: post #100
themadturk wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably not until they sunset free Gmail, at which point there will be millions of voices screaming out in terror.

I've been so nervous about this that I've been preemptively moving my emails over to domains I control (and using Fastmail).

protonmail is better, plus their plans have VPN and file storage.

Re: Alphabet selling Google Domains assets to Squarespace

#527

Post by brycewray »

qodeninja wrote: post #523
brycewray wrote: post #34

I've been using Google Domains for a few years (previously used Namecheap); but, a few months ago, I took a domain I don't actively use and transferred it to Porkbun after reading so many positive comments on HN about that registrar. I was thinking, "Well, you never know about Google, so I may as well see how it goes, just in case." Have, indeed, been very pleased with Porkbun. The article says it'll be some months b…

hows their mail forwarding though?

No idea. I use them strictly for domain-hosting. I use other services for things like that, mainly to avoid the issues of "too many eggs in one basket" and "jack of all trades, master of none."

Re: Alphabet selling Google Domains assets to Squarespace

#529

Post by nucleardog »

qodeninja wrote: post #522
nucleardog wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comes up all the time when registrars come up... "I just want a non-scummy registrar that doesn't try and upsell me, has support when I need it, and generally isn't shit." "Why is this non-shitty registrar $20/yr instead of $10/yr like everyone else! Hell, I can go to Joe's Discount Domain Emporium and get this for _$8_!" I guess I'd just really like to know, for the people that are looking at it like this... ho…

look at you, overpaying! how cute.

I pay AWS $13/yr when I could be paying... well, I can't even easily figure out what I'm spending elsewhere.

Godaddy is telling me $0.01 if I register three years up front, and it looks like year two and beyond are $23/yr? But if I bundle this with my other couple domains I get some sort of discount? Also they add the ICAAN fees and stuff after? So something like $16/yr over three years?

Domains.com looks like $10.99/yr once I managed to strip out the upsells.

Namecheap is telling me $6.98/yr with promo code FLASHCOM and I _think_ $13.98/yr after that?

Hover is still playing games but at least it's kind of clear--$14.99/yr up front, $16.99/yr after that.

Name.com is $10.99/yr, $12.99 renewal and they're pushing me to some sort of bundle discounts.

Spaceship is $7.88/yr, and I _think_ $8.80/yr on renewals?

Just trying to figure out the damn pricing on these sites is already stressing me out more than the loss of potentially around $6/yr.

Add to that that AWS isn't really a "registrar", they're a cloud company that lets you register domains. Their support isn't budgeted on the revenue from domain sales, it's budgeted on the $80b in cloud revenue. I've dealt with them before. They're excellent. AWS also has a pretty solid track record of supporting their products long term (SimpleDB is still here) so I have zero concern about waking up tomorrow and finding out that my registrar is shutting down.

My domain is what my entire online identity is tied to (via email). It sits between me and a bunch of (self-hosted) services I rely on. Even without the frustrating pricing and stuff, the $6 is worth it as insurance.

So no, I'm not overpaying. I'm paying a small premium for a product with a better process and better support and me not having to waste valuable brain space thinking about it or staying on top of whatever the hell my pricing is doing this year (though I guess I kinda messed that up getting into this conversation). If it weren't AWS, I'd have no problem paying Gandi $17/yr or Squarespace $20/yr.

Re: Alphabet selling Google Domains assets to Squarespace

#530

Post by cobertos »

CydeWeys wrote: post #484
cobertos wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a source for this? I'm really curious on this for .dev domains, and how it will affect the nicer pricing Google Domains offered against all other registrars for their own internal registry domains (And you seem really knowledgeable in this space, heh)

The source is I am the tech lead / engineering manager of the Google Registry team.

Lmao, thanks, must be quite the interesting field
Post reply on HN